Content Update 3.19.0 -- Path of Exile: Lake of Kalandra

This patch is full of goodness (and Nerfs too, but GGG is unable to balance its game without using a sledgehammer).

I didn't play the previous league because fights were totally unrewarding (and I mean NO LOOT). That seems to be fixed.

The mob density reduction is what I was expecting from a long time. It will be great to play without being blindfolded by The Clusterfuck. Also, I expect a buff in item rarity to compensate from the lower quantity induced by this density adjustment. We seriously need a fix for all the shit items that clog the game.

Despite nerfs to Necro (oops, I mean change meta to bleed/poison/ignite/chaos. So much for "build diversity"), I will give this season a try. Sad spectres are dead now (killed by their low survivability. It could be fixed with a kind of auto-resummon like in Liege of the Primordial, but for Spectres).

I will see how turns my HoAg poison/bleed necro before deciding if I support the game or not.

That new Kalandra league mechanics seems fine. "press-three-button" Sentinel league mechanic was lazy as F.

I just hope the challenges aren't a boring grindfest for ugly MTX like in 3.18.

sweet, let's f go!
p.s. darkee, thanks for nerfing my long beloved fire trap build

Im actually digging these Harvest changes fam, good job

"

GameBack02 wrote:

Are you guys serious about The Emperor's Vigilance Unique Shield change ? 1000% is going to be some serious numbers on that, the best damage shields for shield throw go to like 1400 evasion and close to 400 energy shield

SST is back? Judging by numbers this shield will have up to 1837 base armor and 385 base ES(without 20% quality) which is insane, BUT (a huge but here) the shield mechanics are pretty tricky, you need to go Life/ES hybrid or you'll have no bock, and also you need to have a lot of ES recovery or you'll deplete it fast and again have no block. The moment your ES is gone you will die, if you depend on block as a defensive mechanism.

"

Andvareel wrote:

BTW, will you be doing something about the "Brother's Stash" card?

Apparently the person who designed the card made it as a tribute to his dead brother, and you've devalued that tribute with this change. That's the sort of thing that happens when you mess with stuff like this. You considered that when you decided on the change, right?

Quote from 2 years ago by pathofdumbasses:

"So I created the card. I turned my brother onto this game and we both love it. We would always play league starts together with a couple other people but it was primarily a me and him thing. So when my brother passed away last year at the age of 30 due to a very freak set of circumstances it took a very big toll on me. No foul play etc. just really out of no where. Anyway. I took some time off from work which ended up in me quitting my job and taking some time. Was about to get back into working when COVID came in and (redacted) that all up. I found out I was set to get a bit of cash from his life insurance and a few other things that helped tide me over financially but obviously... I would rather have my brother back. So I wanted to memorialize him in the game. He (redacted) loved when exalts dropped and we would always had a big "fight" about who would get more during the league so I knew it wanted to be an exalt related card. Settled on the #5 for personal reasons. His name was Justin so I wanted that in the words and GGG even went above and beyond and put it on the grave stone."

damn that is really sad story, did not knew that.

due to family and job issues i only play std since some years and i must say that the divine/exalted changes did rob me of any motivation to continue to play.
i have saved up a lot of exalts to upgrade builds and have a good cushion to craft and invest. years of time gone in a patch note.


i think this is overall one of the most drastic economic changes to POE since...ever? it seems not very thought through, hasted and completely overtuned. (yeah, give divines more impact and make them rarer is good. making exalts obsolete i cannot get behind at all)
this is madness!

and again (map tab issues) a huge foot in the face of dedicated std players.
you got this message clear, i fear.

Looking through Trickster's change, he may have a harder time gaining Frenzy charges? He used to be able to get charges from charging or from damage over time kill.

Ver good direction on Trickster's change overall.

dang wished there were ngamahu's flame changes

"

Juggernaut

Problem: Juggernaut's Unbreakable skill is overly complicated and therefore requires each stat granted to be watered down, meaning that Juggernaut players aren't able to focus on the stats they want from the skill.
Solution: Split Unbreakable into two narrower but more powerful skills.


Details:
Spoiler

Juggernaut's Unbreakable Notable Ascendancy Passive Skill no longer grants Regenerate 2% of Life per second, 5% reduced Damage taken, or 1.5% of Physical Damage prevented from Hits in the past 10 seconds is Regenerated as Life per second. It now grants 8% of Armour applies to Elemental Damage from Hits.
Added a new Notable Ascendancy Passive Skill to Juggernaut: Untiring. It grants 40% increased Life Regeneration rate and 1.5% of Physical Damage prevented from Hits in the past 10 seconds is Regenerated as Life per second.

This is untrue. Two way less powerful nodes replacing Unbreakable. Even less will play Jugg which is already at <1% played

The big problem with new unbreakable is juggs tend not to play with a lot of armor but 7-8 endurance charges instead for physical mitigation. so taking away 5% flat damage reduction is worse than new 8% elemental damage reduction predicated on armor. It's basically trash unless investing in armor and even then with high armor, worse as a whole than 5% flat everything before.

Really no idea what you guys are doing and if there is indeed a "vision"... but here are my thoughts.

Aside from the apologists from 80% of comments in here or less, which are not even 5% of the current steam only players of max 10k ccu (which equates to more unique users overall), much less the 130k ccu peak for this season alone, for steam alone, and again concurrent, unique users are always more overall (....point being, to the apologists and blind supporters that think they are the voice and heart of the community... you are not even close to 1% of the community, and the drastic drop in numbers every league from week to week shows more opinions than those written in here)..... aside from that small number, the largest majority of the community thought Archnemesis was just a bad implementation all around.

From learning ambiguous mod-names, to unbalanced mods, to stacking mods on single rares, to so many other issues, it was just bad.

I personally was not so angry with the addition of arch-nemesis as an idea. The implementation however, I do have issue with.

Although clear it is going for a much more modernised and simplified rare enemy mod system, which I can agree to and yeah its totally cool to want to go in this direction (seems more like something I would see in Diablo 3 tbh). It does make the whole system much more updated for sure as well.

The problem for me was how ridiculously unbalanced and broken the game felt (and feels). Some mods and mod combinations are simply broken. The randomness in the game is on a whole new level. Perhaps this was the idea, create certain mods that are strong and when we see them to be on alert and "watch our backs"... However, seems to have gone too far. There are a few mods or mod combinations (and I still can't place which ones they are) that none of my builds can do, for whatever reason. Including my main, that, like I have mentioned before, can face tank Sirus and pretty much do any content in the game.

I find the increase of RNG in encounters in the game to be silly because of this. You almost have no idea what content you can or cannot actually do safely, which is important for when wanting to level up.

You want to strike a balance between safety and risk. You don't want to drop the power level too much with what tier maps you do, and need a zillion maps for a single level, and you don't want to play in a risky tier either and be constantly gaining 10% xp losing 10% xp.

When not leveling up, ofc this is much less of an issue.

Why should I be faced with rares that are stronger (no exaggeration) than the map boss on a constant basis? Why should I decide "ok, this tier is easy for my build" (and it is, as I roam about like an immortal, T16 for said character btw, just not juiced), deeming said option as safe, and then all of a sudden have to deal with that single encounter that will undo all the xp I got in the last 5 t16 maps. Its kinda ridiculous. Drop to lower tier than T16? But why? T16 should be safe for said build. Why go to something ultra safe, and need 5 maps of xp for every 1 map before. Resulting in some obnoxious levels of grinding.

Ok, Grinding Gear Games, nobody said you had to go Korean MMO level on it through.

Anyway, don't know if the new changes will help in all this, but what really troubles me is their wording in all this. "Based on community feedback" and then proceeding to not even mention what most of that feedback was, putting focus in things that were of smaller import. As a means to tell us "we are making changes based on your feedback" when in all honesty, they are just doing whatever they feel like doing, as per usual.

Feels very disingenuous, and reminiscent of Blizzard feedback, where they treat their audience as children that don't understand.

Sorry, doesn't cut it. You pride yourself as a company that listens to feedback, and yet shy away from just saying "you know what, this mechanic is just broken and we need to do better, we are sorry", instead of half references to the issues at hand in a diplomatic way to say something the likes of "we see from the feedback that we need some adjustments and we have made these new changes to address {irrelevant example 1} and {irrelevant example 2} and we are going forward with this cool addition to the game to make it work better."...... more or less.

That is like saying "we done something awesome, even though 90% of you hated it, but we dont care if you hated it or not, and now we are thinking of how to make it more awesome, as per our own opinion, but will make it sound like we are listening to feedback regardless and play it out as if you are on the same page as us and act as if you are stupid enough to fall for such wording"....


Then moving on to other changes. Beyond has been I guess one of those leagues that is so old, it might as well be gone. They nerfed the goodness and fun of it, and now I guess they are ridding it completely. I am ok with this I guess, as I loved scorged league, and this is although a very flimsy way of bringing it back slightly (without any of its actual cool mechanics, a delirium that you could turn on, off and continue where you were, or corrupting items, or corrupting maps, etc) and so with only 5% of its mechanics, with none of the things I mentioned, neither the cool nightmare world, just add back some corrupted currency, and call it a day. But regardless, its better than nothing, so Im ok with this.

Feels like, half work really.

Moving on again, lets decrease rares in the game.

This may solve a lot of issues. And the archnemeis changes along with this could indeed be a good new way of experiencing the game.

It might also backfire.

And that because I have little faith in GGG being able to properly balance anything at this point. The less rares we are going to encounter I foresee will be mini uber bosses and create conditions of situations where some rares might need to be skipped. Putting ALL the loot into a burst into these fewer rares as a result brings about less loot for us. And the problem with ArchN is the mod combinations. You can literally run a non juiced map and come across an ArchNem that is just broken.

With the current already broken loot drop, that seems to be balanced towards the end game 5% of the community playing full juiced maps, I do not trust that the new system will help with loot at all, instead make it worse.

What needs to be done in this game is fix the loot drop for non-juiced maps, make it work and play into itself, and THEN scale it to end game levels. Not the other way around, realise that "oh, too much loot is in the juiced maps, lets nerf it" and as a result diminish non juiced maps to nothingness.

Case and point, exalted orbs.

I haven't had a single one drop this entire league (no I am not playing league, it was imo a lazy mechanic and a waste of time to even bother with it, so I am playing standard). At close to over 250 t16 maps now, at least, I have had zero exalt drops.

Why exactly?

A third of which maps at least where at least rare. All with quality at the very least, and a very large number with scarabs and fragments to further increase quality etc. A large number, I would say 50 and more, with delirium mirrors as I run on my atlas passive Delirium Breach and Essences, and a good number of those deliriums with currency as well. Aside from that plenty maps in party as well with delirium layers on them and again if not full juicing, mild juicing.

The loot overall is much less than it was, and the exalt drops are ridiculous to non existent. Think I made 1 exalt all league from Harbingers only (ah yes, the other focus on my Atlas).

At no point did I see in the stream that "hey guys, we have nerfed drops to oblivion, sorry, lets fix it", all I hear is diplomatic and almost lying phrases to the extents of excuses and "better shaping" the content instead of admitting it outright needs fixing.

Again, balancing the game to suit the few and the meta.

To add salt to the wound, because GGG felt like Divine Orbs should be as rare as exalts or more, instead of creating a recipe for exalts, no need for it to be an easy one, it could of still been something rare, they drop the recipe completely for Divine Orbs. Further more, they change the Exalt crafting recipes, and instead of having half and half, outright drop exalts from there completely and make those recipes work with Divine alone.

I joked in my last post of sarcasm, that they should randomly delete some currency on standard players to make the game more interesting. This is not far from it. Aside from the fact that again, drop rates in this league were abysmal, I go NO six link drops the entire league. That is sad. Were I used to get several each other league. They are now also nerfing exalts even more.

A currency that we chased and made so many TRADES WITH has now been dropped to half its value in a few days from the announcement alone. Practically, they have halved ALL our trades from the last season. Practically, everything we sold for 1ex actually should of been sold for 2ex or 1 divine.

And they want to talk about a vision? What vision exactly? Just whilly nilly make whatever changes they see fit and who cares about the community, right?

Wasn't their initial "vision" a currency system that is organic and evolves dependent on the community itself?

I see nothing of the sort here. They constantly keep meddling with the natural flow of a community. They just up and decided exalts will not have the value they had. Seriously? The base trading currency in the game?

Sarcasm or not, I think it is obvious in my last post I was not far off from my expectations from GGG.

Really disappointed in their "direction" and so called "vision"... Which, if true, they should of warned people about. Like fusions for example. We know in the back of our mind these will be useless in PoE2, and that they will be converted.

Any heads up for nerfing the single most important currency in the game??????? Seriously???? And we call this a vision????

Ok, sure. Whatever they say.

All this on the heels of one season after another of constant contradicting. "We want to make the game slower" and then they proceed to make more league mechanics where you need to one shot mobs to keep running like crazy for you do keep up with the mechanic. Nerfing builds, which cost 350+ exalts to build, no exaggeration (it actually cost 420ex to be exact, but a good 100ex from that was experimentation, so lets cut the difference) into builds that then cost less than 100c. They say one thing, do another, they throw builds around like they are nothing, throw peoples time invested into the game down the garbage, give you 100 build options but then decide which builds are the ones that actually work, punish you seemingly for finding a way to enjoy their game (and most likely listen to babies cry all day about a build being stronger when said build needs investment and time to even figure out) and nerf your tools used. Meanwhile all the meta-babies are completely cool with playing meta builds that cost 30c.........

They talk about then game being too easy, then they power creep it. Then they nerf it and make it unbearable. Then they revert it. Does this sound like a vision?

They talk about being the successor to Diablo 2. Well, D2 was easy. In case they didn't know.

They talk about balancing builds, then make metas where only a specific theme is strong. Then next league nerf it again.

They talk about "people with different tastes playing the game and something for everyone", yet treat standard like it is trash. Very least they could of done if they actually cared was keep the divine orb recipe in standard for one season to make sure the change can be adapted to, instead of outright telling everyone "your bank account has been halved".

They say in the one minute they want rares to shine for end game gear, buff bases and nerf legendaries, then (in this season) say that they want Legendaries to shine more.

Does this seriously sound like a sound vision of a developer that knows what they are doing and what they are going for?

And if I am wrong, then give us a road map of "the vision", which I would assume ties into PoE2 as well, and let us know how many more "upsets" we can expect and what changes you plan to the game. And if we agree, we can stick around. Don't weasel your way around the facts at hand and make it sound like you have something cool planned just so you don't lose any more players so you can milk us as much as possible and when PoE2 drops, "all is good, new content for them to experience, they will stick around for a few seasons, silly sheep", and rinse repeat.


I used to defend your work and direction whole heartedly. You were a company in touch with your community. During the PoE2 announcement you where perhaps in your best shape, and up to the Rogue Harbour league. After that you have shaken the trust in so many players, giving less and less incentive and reason for people to want to play the game.

And for those ready to say this isn't the case, the numbers are there in the open for you all to see the results on your own. People are dropping PoE more and more and faster each season.

Each time our trust betrayed some more.

As a standard player, which also enjoys a good league here and there if I like it (Scourge and Heist being the only recent leagues I actually enjoyed and played a lot of), with extra purpose of then combining currency in Standard and accumulate like in ALL OTHER RPGs EVER CREATED, call me old fashioned, I have every time less and less incentive to play.

At this point, what I was being sarcastic over came true. They just nerfed our currency to smithereens. And mind you, I had plenty divines that I simply tossed off to friends because its a currency I never used. Thanks for the heads up GGG.

Why go on? Why play? To collect more currency that I don't even know if I want to accumulate or sell? To try and find creative builds of my own that can do end game content to have them nerfed in a few months? No incentive.

I have not supported this game with cash since Expedition, and the way things are going, don't plan on doing so at all any more unless I see changes. And I KNOW I am not the only one. Not saying this as a threat, "muaaah you don't do what i want no more money muaaaah". No, not at all. Just stating a reality. I can't support a game that I enjoy less and less. At this point, the most fun i have is playing small creative builds on low tier maps just for the sake of getting my arpg fix. Its all its resulted in.

They have the right to go in whichever direction they want, but as a fan/consumer of the product for 10years, I have the right to state my opinion on it all as well.

After a point, a product is as much its creators as it is the consumers. Turning a formula on its head over time is disrespectful to the consumer. Saying one thing constantly and doing another is just lying in the end, or at least that is how it comes across.

And again, aside from those in forums that are ready do defend, which may as well be the families of the developers at this point, I trust the opinion in these forums even less, they are not even 1% of the total players, a number which is constantly dropping.

Maybe they want to turn the game into a niche. That is also ok. But sure is a slap in the face if it results in something it never set out to be in the first place. Its very different having a vision, creating something, and then holding onto it and not making changes for new crowds etc and this result into a niche. Very different from starting down own path, going down another, and then changing again, one second saying you want to open up to new crowds, then next making odd choices that push new-comers away, and result in a niche title that isn't what it even set out to be any more.

A real slap to all those that set out on this journey from the beginning, supported you and were with along the way on every turn, only to listen to them less and less, and whenever you changes cannot be explained chalk it up to some "vision" that if true, would of been roadmapped already so people can prepare for changes to come instead of just hit them over the head with it.

You speak of balance, in a game that has 100+ builds, of which 90% cannot do you end game content. And you continue to believe the way to achieve balance is by nerfing things and creating power creeping metas.

And we are supposed to trust "the vision" and just stick around.

Finding more and more reasons to play less and less of this game.

I will of course keep playing, like I said this is my arpg fix. And the best arpg at that, even with all they have ruined in it. I just will simply revert to what I used to do back in 2016-2017 when the game was again broken, and play only the content that is easy, care zero for currency, and just have fun making new creative builds even if GGG has deemed they can only go as far as tier yellow maps. Whatever. So sure, I'll stick around. This is still my Diablo 2 fix. But can't support any more, neither invest anywhere near the time I used to invest. Not by a longshot.

As for diminishing numbers and "catering to newcomers" yet doing everything in their power to push them away, standard is the prime example of this. I have dozens of people that dropped PoE after a single season once realizing the "idea to the game" and what the devs support is a refresh each season and losing all you done. With a large number in the community (the loud bunch at least) calling Standard a graveyard. And the response of all these newcomers was quite simply, bb, I want no part in this.

Leagues where "an opportunity for players to get into the game in a fresh start" and to try out league mechanics before they went to standard. That is what league was. Now, league is standard pretty much, they give zero care of what happens in standard, all their choices go towards these fresh new starts all the time, and ultimately keep slapping standard players over and over again to create new "interesting" metas for leagues.

Whereas they should be taking care of the entire game, and keep leagues indeed as the place to test new mechanics and fresh starts, and have some respect for standard for once.

The majority of "speaking heads" in the community are all about leagues, and will cringe to me even mentioning standard now. Yet, again, newsflash, the lot of you ain't even but a percentage of the whole. You want to treat PoE as a race each season so we can flex on who got higher on PoE ninja and whatever else, go for it. Others want to treat this game as an aRPG.... In case anyone forgot what that means, it means action role playing game. It doesn't mean "seasonal ladder climbing" in any of its ROLE PLAYING essence. But I guess that is also the only thing to keep even the few interested. Competition. A small means to feel better about themselves, and to latch onto a game that should be for fun and totally miss the point, never having loved it in the first place.

Anyway, probably the last entry I will make in these forums for a long time (from which entries over the years one can see how much I supported GGG as well, and how that slowly declined, but anyway). I had already been absent for a long time as it was, with few posts far apart. This was a good time as any to share my thoughts one last time at least for now, with the launch of the new season.

I find it so disheartening. But again, find no other option than to continue not supporting a game that clearly has no idea what it wants and keeps flip flopping from one direction to another from one vision to another again and again and the developers treating their audience more and more over time as children. Sorry, but this is not the title I began supporting.

You promised interesting builds and threw a huge passive tree in our faces.

You promised an organic trade system based on items dependent on the players playing the game.

You promised an endless end game that plays into itself with so much vibrant content.

You promised a gear system with interesting crafting and options.

Builds are meta based, trade is based on your meddling of changing the actual value and use of BASE CURRENCY ITEMS, your gear crafting and itimezing has been changed to favour rare to legendary to back several times with one power creep one nerf and another buff after the other, and is not based on balance no matter how much you say so, but again on metas, your end game is based on the few 5% that play the game and is duller than mud each season making it more and more pointless to play unless you are again, playing metas and only then slightly enjoying full juiced maps, which also have been dulled down to oblivion. Played several full juiced maps this season as well. Wow, truly a sad experience.

Don't see any promises being kept unfortunately, and all I see is diplomatic language and doubling down on things many of us disagree with.

Hope you turn the ship around at some point so I and many others can continue the journey once more on your side and support you once more. Till then, this game is nothing more than a shell of all the amazing it once was or could be. A shell that is still better imo than any other arpg out there (at least for now) but a shell no less.

Whats next? Chaos Orbs reduced to the value of Orbs of Chance? That would be another nice slap to Standard players. Lets go ahead and halve the second most important currency in the game. At this point, I expect it all, and nothing surprises me. And again, going off my last post which was sarcastic, its so funny to see how right I was.

Laters. Hope to see you again in the fray some time in the future.